Policy Review An Adjustment in Direction

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Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
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The writing is on the wall.

If you think the "OU players" (not that most of who you're referring to even plays OU frequently anymore. Just call us/them competitive players... or if you want to be less euphemistic, good players) involved in CAP are a negative influence, that's fine. It's your project. We'll leave, but you can do whatever you want. I just really don't see the point of involving all of us in a discussion that dragged on for months when your mind seems to have been made up from the beginning. It's frankly insulting to those contributors who have put countless hours into CAP over the years to be so underhanded about hearing their input and then ignoring it.
We've spent the last two or three projects listening to the non-stop venom (and yes, venom is not too harsh a description) of "good Players" and bent over backwards to try and accommodate them both in culture and in process steps. The level of animosity inflicted on every single discussion medium, which was demanding we berate everyone who has ever had a misconception about a viable set for the metagame just because it doesn't match the viable set in present OU (for example), was absurd. And now that we're thinking it's better to appeal to our own consistent meta battlers having reached out the other way, it's suddenly "how underhanded and insulting of you to ignore our input!"

Total Bull Excrement.

Here's how I see the arc of the next 9 months going:

1. We build the next CAP, likely the final CAP of Gen 6, for the CAP Metagame.
2. As we assess the next PRC phase Sun and Moon gets released and CAP goes on its normal early-gen hiatus while we adjust to all the new Pokemon in every metagame.
3. In all likelihood we build the CAP after that based around Sun/Moon OU - *but we have established we can build for different metas than OU effectively and we had a project to test how that effects engagement / forum happiness / etc.*

Our split with OU became worse as the Suspect Tests grinded on looking for the next strongest thing to ban and relied ever more on the elite of the tiering process to determine that next strongest thing. When a generation is new, that mindset which is generally the polar opposite of CAP's approach (deriving a "good" metagame through *addition* rather than tiering's deriving it through *subtraction*) doesn't take hold as quickly, although who knows how big the Quickban list for Sun/Moon will be.
 
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Stratos

Banned deucer.
promises made in this thread are cheap. when posts start rolling in about the CAP meta which make six-paragraph persuasively worded arguments based off the need to counter Thunderbolt Gengar, we'll see if the CAP meta participants are actually that much more welcoming of absolute ignorance than the OU guys. On the other hand, there's also no way to disprove that they're more tolerant. Since Doug is convinced that tolerating thunderbolt gengar-tier posts is the way forward for CAP (i dont necessarily disagree, if only because these posts come in at such a high rate that you can't possibly address them all) then it seems like there's not much to do except try doing a CAP in the CAP Meta and see if it works out. If it doesn't we can just switch back to OU.


now about them stat limits

To try answer the question in bold above, Doug asks two main questions: Is CAP 'inviting' enough to improve member enlistment and retention? and Is CAP different enough from OU to avoid the problem of too much focus on perfection/success?

In the last few years since I joined the CAP metagame, CAP metagame has been the Smogon equivalent of a poor man. We never had the luxury of a consistent influx of players, and many of our lower ladder players leave something to be desired in terms of competitive ability and knowledge. Regarded as an irrelevancy by not only the regular PS community, but also by our own colleagues in the process, the CAP meta community has adapted to make the most of its predicament. Since the number of incoming users is so low, the meta community is/has to be very welcoming to any new users regardless of competitive ability. If you speak to any CAP room staff member who has laddered/been in room tours, they'll tell you about the countless times they've given useful links and verbal advice to noobs. Some users even do unofficial 1 to 1 tutoring to help both current users and noobs. The room will often spring to life after being inactive for a while to help out in a request for teambuilding help. I'm not here to sing the praises of the CAP room staff, but I am here to point out that most of the people in the CAP room (regardless of rank) are willing to go very far to help out new users, and there is no reason to assume that this wouldn't continue from the PS room and into the creation process.

A lot has been said about OU, its core values and how it may be damaging CAP in this thread. In the CAP room, you're punished for being a negative chat presence, but you'll be helped out regardless of how bad you are. Even in the forum, where irrelevant posts are hidden, CAP meta leaders have showcased a willingness to allow less skilled users to write analyses and even host forum events, as well as a general gentleness to those less knowledgeable in meta threads. Doug posted another post during the writing of this post talking about the tiering process of Smogon and how it has affected CAP culture, and I'd like to reiterate his earlier point about CAP meta not having choice in its tiering (both in terms of incoming CAPs and also in terms of having to adhere to the OU banlist). One would imagine this would mean a detachment from the sucess/failure culture that tiering brings.

I will be completely honest and say I don't really know if CAP suffers from 'wannabe syndrome', but I do know that the CAP room is just generally a more 'chill' environment than the process (and OU generally) is. Although nobody likes to be wrong or to listen to wrong statements, there is a lot more focus on being happy rather than 'correct' in the meta, because the environment is different (people come to have fun, which is what CAP was meant to be). This thread was created to fix the problem of the toxic environment of the process, and so one would imagine increasing the influence of the CAP meta, a place known for its relaxed atmosphere, would be a positive step.

Essentially, this topic comes down to a simple choice: Do we give up on our connection to the 'mainstream' of Showdown in the hope of boosting user knowledge and removing the toxic environment, becoming an OM in a way we weren't before, or do we want to focus on making CAP respected within Smogon to try and bring in top OU players at the cost of having to remove very widespread cultural views about CAP?

If we do decide to build for the CAP meta, I think there will be tangible advantages to the cohesion between the CAP communities in its process and meta branches, but a point I'd also like to raise is whether it'd be more logical to have one last go at trying to make CAP respected within the mainstream of PS given that losing our connection to OU may be a point of no return in terms of shaping CAP's image.

Disclaimer: I think I've written myself into circles (my head is spinning IRL rn), so I hope you can follow what I've written.
This is true of me too in DOU, one of those "uninviting" tiers. The problem isn't that any tier is uninviting. Anyone who comes to the DOU chatroom and doesn't try to pick fights can get as much help as they want, no matter how shit they are. But if you try to use shitty ideas to argue in a suspect test, I'm not going to "invite" you there, I'm going to "invite" you to the room to learn how to play DOU before i let you post in the Suspect thread again. The problem isn't that OU is naturally uninviting, it's that people treat CAP with the exclusivity of a suspect thread instead of the inclusivity of a PS room. This is pretty off-topic, but I don't want CAP guys to think the rest of Smogon is a bunch of hard-asses that shoo away new users. For the most part, we don't. From suspect threads, we do.
 
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nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
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does OU even care about CAP anymore

like i've barely seen any notable OU posters post in like, ages. and we've made lots of changes to try and attract OU people and it just seems like it's not gonna happen. i mean fuck what is cap really about: OU, or playable fakemons? imo much more playable fakemons, since the biggest draw for me has always been "oh hey you can make a mon and actually get to play with it on a popular sim ! ! !" nowdays experimenting with OU is just a flimsy excuse that doesn't even make sense because OU doesn't even care anymore. we've had change after change to try to rectify the ship steering away from OU but the wave pushing that ship has been there for ages.

showdown and skype trump IRC now.

facebook and twitter are hugely important.

and change, that great, inexorable wave has blown over CAP, for better or for worse, and things are not going back to the way they were. we can either embrace it, or keep trying to cling to past glories, and keep trying to delude ourselves that 'yes, THIS change will be the one that captures back the hardcore OU audience!!!!'

i suppose #makecapgreatagain isn't the worst of slogans.
 
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snake

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CAP Co-Leader
Note: Please read through my entire post before commenting/angrily ranting about how I'm an awful person. It has some CAP-controversial stuff in the beginning, but I really want to voice my opinion on this.

After writing my last post on elitism, I began to think back when I read all of those threads in the CAP Archive, and I was trying to pinpoint where exactly CAP started having this "elitism" problem. Perhaps Doug or someone else who's been around for a lot longer than me can answer, but I feel like it's been around for a long time. And also I feel like CAP tries really hard not to be elitist, because "if we aren't elitist, then we are therefore super inclusive."

However, it is human nature to be elitist. I don't really care how you slice it. Humans will always try to build a hierarchy to some extent.
The best comparison I can think of for CAP is how Protestants from England moved to America for religious freedom eventually prejudiced other Protestants who came for the same purpose (I've forgotten most of this history's details). CAP was created to be open and inviting, but eventually new users got ignored or chastised for their "stupidity."

So where exactly am I going with this?

I propose we stop asking ourselves "How can we not be elitist?" and rather "How can we be the least elitist as possible and still remain very inclusive?"

This new question changes a lot about how we can run our process. Stratos voiced my fear that if we shift our focus to the CAP metagame, as inclusive as CAP players are for new people, we'll eventually lose it and start getting mad at new users for their inexperience. It's really just inevitable. However, if we become just a little "elitist" and become aware of it, I feel like we can have a) much smoother discussion and b) less skewed voting.

To promote better discussion, we need to make it so people just can't jump in, say something completely random and unrelated to the discussion as a whole, and then leave and never be seen again. Therefore, I feel like one solution is to have some "required reading" before posting. If anyone's interested in it, I'd be happy to type it up, but basically it'll outline a) process in a maximum of ~3 sentences for each step just to outline what each step is, b) what a good post looks like (e.g. not a one liner or whatever), c) why you should actually read the discussion before voting, and d) why you should join and stay with CAP (we have a cool metagame on PS!). It won't be a 9 page essay; rather it'll just make sure people know what they're getting into rather than going in blind. Also, it'll weed out the people thinking this is a non-competitive project and hopefully excite those who want to participate in this kind of project.

To have voting that reflects discussion, we need to restrict voters to those who post in the discussion OR somehow restrict it to those who have read the thread. I've seen a bunch of first posts in the voting threads that don't reflect the discussion at all, and it frankly pisses me off. We all know how stupid polls can be; let's fix them.

To summarize, let's accept that we need to be slightly elitist, have some required reading, and require people to be well informed voters. I know this goes against many tenets of The CAP Project, but I feel like we will have smoother projects and attract and retain better participants.
 

Ignus

Copying deli meat to hard drive
I mean, we're just here to make fakemons anyhow. I don't think it's that different to make it for the CAP meta rather than OU - our end goal is the same: Make awesome shit. If this fixes all the problems with the process outlined - cool! If it doesn't, it's not like we're taking steps backwards. We never really recruited from OU in the first place, and toxicity isn't going to go up because we switched metagames.

On top of this, the switch will give us a good idea of how well contributors who aren't familiar with CAP's personal metagame can adjust their reasoning from OU. If that lays the groundwork for transitioning to exploring UU, PU, or any other tier, that's great. I'd say it's worth a shot.
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
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I've given this some thought recently, and I believe we've begun to drift from the topic at hand. The only item left to settle in this thread is whether CAP should be building for OU or the CAP Metagame, and, while there are good reasons for both positions, I am in favor of continuing to build for OU. From previous months of discussion, it's obvious that CAP needs to build for one single metagame. The OU metagame is infinitely more developed, popular, and accessible than the CAP metagame and is the only metagame out of the two that can sustain a project as large as CAP. The toxicity in our community is not particularly tied to "OU culture", and even if it was, switching to the CAP metagame will be at worst ineffective at abating that toxicity and at best a temporary fix.

I'm going to talk about project toxicity first. We've been operating under the premise that CAP is in a downward spiral and that the toxicity in our community is at an all-time high. I strongly disagree with that premise, and I ask veterans who have participated in the past four CAPs to reflect on how enjoyable each of those projects was. CAP 18 - Volkraken - had its fair share of toxicity, largely stemming from the results of the Concept Assessment thread. The outcome of that thread was widely panned, and although the ensuing discussions were an admirable effort to fulfill that Concept Assessment, the damage had been done. The poor beginning to CAP 18 allowed for prolonged and excessive venom to be directed towards project leaders and at the community at large. The toxicity worsened in CAP 19 (Plasmanta), which was by far the most off-putting and tense project of the generation. CAP 19 featured continuous clashes between project leadership and forum moderation, constant threats of leaving by top contributors (few of which actually happened, but that's beside the point), and culminated with the Retention Issues PR thread. Contrast CAPs 18 and 19 with 20 and 21. CAP 20, while not perfect, was much more fun to build than either of the two previous ones. There were issues of frustration over the Pokemon's power level and whining over the predictable nature of the concept, but all in all the environment surrounding CAP 20 was much more pleasant than that of 18 or 19. CAP 21 - Crucibelle - was one of the most fun Pokemon to build in ages. The discussions were vibrant and the IRC and Showdown community was more welcoming; it just felt like those who contributed to the toxicity of previous projects decided to give it a rest for CAP 21. In a way, I'm sad this thread has taken up so much time because I want to use CAP 21 as a springboard to an even more enjoyable CAP 22. The opinions in this paragraph are not gospel, they are merely my perception of how CAP has progressed over the generation. I know there are people out there who preferred building CAP 18 to CAP 20, or CAP 20 to CAP 21, or whatever. And I'm not here to comment on the competitive "success or failure" of previous projects because that's not what this thread is about. But all in all, the past three projects in particular demonstrate CAP is on a steep upward trend, not the downward spiral it's been made out to be.

Had the Concept Assessment in CAP 18 gone differently, there may have been less toxicity. Had the TL in CAP 19 been allowed to work with a concept they preferred, there may have been less toxicity. Even if there are a handful of users who can't let mistakes be made and prefer to stroke their own egos rather than propose solutions, this is not a symptom of "OU culture", it's a symptom of "competitive culture" that transcends metagames. It's the moderators' and IRC OPs' jobs to police this toxicity. To switch from the OU metagame to the CAP metagame because of a decline in culture is to admit that a handful of toxic users can hijack CAP as a whole and that the moderators are not competent enough to handle those users. Regardless, the toxicity our project has faced and continues to face cannot be tied to OU specifically, and there is no reason to believe that building for the CAP metagame would improve the forum and chat culture long-term. Doug brings up a point on this that I would like to rebut:

DougJustDoug said:
My contention all along is not that "OU is bad for CAP" because of OU popularity. If it's a popularity thing, no doubt OU is the way to go for us. I think "OU is bad for CAP" because of the culture that has developed around OU and CAP. Or more specifically, the culture of some of the OU players that have tended to participate in CAP in recent years. Which I think is an extension of the general mentality of OU overall. So I've been a proponent of CAP moving away from OU. And my main goal of that is to distance the CAP project culture from a couple of cultural values that I think are prevalent with many OU players:
  • An obsession with getting the metagame "right". Which means "success" and "failure" are a very Big Deal™ in OU.
  • A belief that input from top players is the most important thing. And input from less-than-top players, needs to be actively weeded out and discouraged.
Both of those things are essential to making the current Smogon tiering process work, they are now fundamental building blocks of the entire Smogon tiering effort, with OU at the center of it all. Both of those things, I think, are detrimental to CAP. Specifically:
  • We shouldn't be so obsessed with "success" and "failure".
  • We shouldn't minimize input from less-than-top players.
While I agree that the OU players participating in CAP have a hang-up with project "success" and "failure", I do not believe that issue stems from OU or competitive players' presence in CAP. Plenty of CAP metagame players who participate in CAP share that obsession, and plenty of OU/competitive players in CAP see beyond "success" and failure". Although I'm not going to name names, I also believe the number of competitive players (who, let's be serious, play about as much OU as you or me nowadays) who actively cause project toxicity and propagate your two complaints can be counted on one hand. And even then, what makes you believe this same sort of toxicity won't appear in the CAP metagame if that's what we build for long-term? As we've decided earlier in this thread, CAP is about building for one metagame. That metagame will undoubtedly have tiering and balancing mechanisms that will invariably favor top players. Whether that metagame builds through "addition" or "subtraction" is irrelevant, as is whether it ends up being OU or CAP. The culture that comes from rigorous suspect testing and balancing is a necessary evil to create a metagame where projects like CAP can flourish. CAP is about learning from a metagame, and it makes more sense to study a balanced and competitive metagame instead of a shallow, unbalanced metagame. I think Bughouse's last post speaks for the majority of the competitive/OU players that participate in the CAP project, so I'm going to quote it here.

Bughouse said:
If you think the "OU players" (not that most of who you're referring to even plays OU frequently anymore. Just call us/them competitive players... or if you want to be less euphemistic, good players) involved in CAP are a negative influence, that's fine. It's your project. We'll leave, but you can do whatever you want. I just really don't see the point of involving all of us in a discussion that dragged on for months when your mind seems to have been made up from the beginning. It's frankly insulting to those contributors who have put countless hours into CAP over the years to be so underhanded about hearing their input and then ignoring it.
The competitive players are the backbone of our project. They've put in thousands of man-hours into creating some of the best arguments, posts, and Pokemon this project has seen. To either force them to adapt to a metagame they don't play or blame them for causing poorly-defined "toxicity" is beyond insulting.

But these arguments about project toxicity only apply if you ignore the blindingly obvious fact that the CAP metagame is neither large nor developed enough to support the CAP project. OU had over two million battles in the past month and CAP had less than five thousand. In February, it took OU less than two hours to match the number of battles the CAP metagame saw in a month. There are dozens of times more analyses in the OU forums than in the fledgling CAP Analysis Workshop. OU hosts regular tournaments that force the top level of competition to continue adapting and analyzing metagame trends at a speed that the CAP metagame does not have. With all the whining about OU's suspect testing producing too volatile a metagame it's easy to forget that the CAP metagame is arguably less stable with its constant quarterly additions. At least with OU, there's an end goal: develop a metagame that does not have broken elements and then stop tweaking it. With CAP, there is a constant process of addition that will make it nearly impossible to create a metagame with OU's level of stability and balance. Furthermore, there are literally hundreds of OU participants for every CAP participant. Right now, it's easy for any OU player with a casual interest in CAP to jump in and contribute. If we switch to the CAP metagame, we restrict CAP participation to the CAP metagame's minuscule userbase and people that want to learn an entirely different metagame before participating. Developing for the CAP metagame creates the greatest barrier to entry the CAP project has ever seen.

I'm not shitting on the CAP metagame. I love the CAP metagame, and I believe it's important for the CAP metagame to grow and develop possibly to the point where it could sustain the CAP project in the far future. I fully support keeping the CAP ladder open during the playtests. I'm thrilled the CAP Analysis workshop is as large as it is. I want to see regular CAP forum and Showdown tournaments. I want CAP metagame contributions to count towards the CAP Contributor badge. But the fact of the matter is that the CAP metagame is, right now, a moderately sized Other Metagame. It has less than 10% of the monthly battles as Balanced Hackmons. Gen 3 OU still sees more battles than CAP. Monotype sees fifty times as many monthly battles as CAP, and I doubt any of those metagames are developed enough to sustain a project as large and ambitious as CAP. The burden falls on the CAP metagame community to grow their metagame to a point where switching the CAP project from OU to CAP is feasible. Until then, there is no choice but to stay our course.

The choice is simple: either develop for the most accessible and developed metagame on Smogon or isolate ourselves from the rest of Smogon in order to spite some of our best contributors.
 
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Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
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Detroitlolcat said:
At least with OU, there's an end goal: develop a metagame that does not have broken elements and then stop tweaking it.
Not to be totally dismissive, but OU appeared to stop being about this goal a long time ago. Let us say that Generation 7 were not about to be released. If we were still in Gen 6 for the next five years I guarantee you on March 21st, 2021 we would still be suspecting something that somebody thought was broken because of bureaucratic inertia inherent to any project that rewards continuing the status quo for its own prestige. ORAS's release date was November 21st of 2014, which doesn't really seem like that long ago, but it took very little time for the processes put in place during XY (release date Oct 12 2013) to move onto a sorting hat for all the new Megas and then progressively going after whatever next strongest thing there was.

We should also consider what having tons of on-sight analyses does and does not do. CAP for better or worse attracts new users who sometimes do not even read our own rules threads. They will not have read and absorbed the hundreds of OU analyses on Pokemon, but rather use them like most normal people do - as a reference guide for EVs/spreads/moves. Bar a base stat point or two nothing in CAP, except Cawmodore which is weaker then Azumarill but a LOT faster and Specs Analytic Volkraken on the switch, is much scarier than existing, established OU threats. The moves encountered might be different but on balance you can basically take a spread from an OU analysis and put it on a CAP team and it will not see a drop in performance for the kind of hits it is supposed to and not supposed to take.

Finally, since the core of your post was toxicity:

In this very thread we have people talking about "Thunderbolt Gengar-level posts." Well, we changed out entire movepool process and moderation philosophy to take care of that two projects ago. And yet somehow it keeps getting brought up because the elitism of "I'm better at OU than you are, therefore my voice is more important, I can ignore actual project changes, and I can treat other users as inferiors" is alive and well. Even while the project grows out of its bad phases, that entitled attitude never changes. Encapsulated: "You weren't perfect in the past, so I get to criticize you in the present."

That's the core of the toxicity. The reason there is such a groundswell to switch over to CAP is because it is perceived that some people are here for for nothing more than an ego stroking trip from a high perch of "good players" speaking down to "not good players." We've already changed out policies weed out as far as possible the negative elements of the less experienced fanbase. When will the more experienced fanbase start treating this project as a community instead of a lecture hall where they represent the professor?

I was on the staff for Birkal's various and multiple attempts to incorporate more OU players into CAP. Nobody is nicer and worked harder to try and grasp the core of what OU wanted in the CAP project and try to meet those needs. I don't want to speak for him on this thread, especially since I'm not staff anymore, but in my personal assessment all that bending over backwards to reach out to that community got him was to be treated as a doormat - which he never deserved. The very fact that Birkal is the one initially proposing this change should be a wake-up call, at least in my one person's sole opinion.

We can and have worked to fix the problems ignorant newbies inflict on the project.

Tell me how can even approach the mindset where if we don't cave to "good player" demands it's equivalent to not wanting competitive players in CAP.

The toxicity problem is that a very small subset of people demand to be treated as superior, and when they are told to cut the shit they whine that CAP hates competitive players. It's not "competitive players" our community is having a problem with, it's entitled, self-satisfied whiners. Removing the basis for the elitist "req-measuring contest" is one way to get rid of that particular problem. I don't think its the best, but it does work.

I also think that on its own merits building for CAP metagame near the end of a Gen is a good field test that outweighs any relative downsides. That is also temporarily eliminates the entitlement problem is a very satisfying bonus.
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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Orange Islands
ginganinja Wanted me to post this for him as for some reason he does not have rights to post here. It's mostly in response to DK above.

Ginga said:
Yo so I just wanted to let Deck Knight know cos I have no idea how much he frequents the OU forum bit its actually been pretty uncommon for OU to be suspect testing things at the moment, since there’s been a pretty long gap between suspect tests atm. Heck by and large, suspect testing has been fairly well received this generation from what I understand, so I don’t really know where his sweeping statement is coming from that suspecting for this metagame would still be going on like 5 years from now. That said, hey if he thinks it’s a legitimate concern with OU tiering then I can drop the OU Council a line and pass on his concerns / ask them if they would be planning to extend suspect testing till 2021. Just lmk.

RE “The reason there is such a groundswell to switch over to CAP is because it is perceived that some people are here for for nothing more than an ego stroking trip from a high perch of "good players" speaking down to "not good players." We've already changed out policies weed out as far as possible the negative elements of the less experienced fanbase. “

I think you give the OU playerbase too much credit. No-one legitimately cares enough to get involved in CAP just to bitch to not so good players. You can do that anywhere, you literally don’t have to join CAP to do this. Also, your policies unfortunately haven’t been that effective. Speaking as someone that had the joy of moderating the disaster of the Concept Forum, it’s really, really painful. Also just a heads up, posts like “Thunderbolt Gengar” probably get more flack that usual, because they are usually from people that have never played OU, and pretend like they know what the OU metagame is actually like and then come across looking dumb. I wouldn’t dream of posting in UU hyping some set that doesn’t exist, I’d look at utter moron. Yet this sort of thing still happens in CAP and it drives frustration from any OU player because an incorrect assumption needs correcting somehow, and unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to convince some newbie players, especially when the incorrect assumption in question came from someone highly respected within the CAP community (on occasion).
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
I want to make a couple things clear: I barely care about recruiting OU players to the CAP Project. On a list of procedural and cultural issues facing CAP, I would put "Not Enough OU Players" behind plenty of other problems such as project length, PRC length, playtesting reform, concept reform, a second look at the movepool process, development of the CAP metagame, and stat limits to name a few. CAP's worth is not remotely tied to the quantity of tournament-caliber OU players it attracts. While improving CAP's reputation on Smogon would be nice, it's again not a high priority. I don't want to pander to the OU community or beg for them to try out CAP. Birkal deserves nothing but respect and praise for his efforts to reach out to the OU community, even if those efforts have not been extremely successful. CAP needs to take care of those who already participate in the project, and that means eliminating toxicity and venom from our forum and chatrooms. Taking care of our own includes building for a metagame that our community is familiar with, and the overwhelming majority of CAP participants have more experience in OU than the CAP metagame. Deck Knight and I have the same objectives here, though we clearly differ in how we wish to accomplish them.

I disagree with Deck's premise that OU's constantly looking to ban the next best thing. I don't think the OU community derives much benefit or enjoyment out of years of suspect testing. However, I can't read the minds of the OU brass and I do not wish to argue that point. I will point out that even the OU brass looks at expanding banlists and suspect testing as a problem, however. I'm also not an expert on the CAP metagame, so I'm not going to comment on how transferable OU spreads and analyses are to the CAP metagame. My guess is that a metagame with 21 different threats than OU is going to look a fair bit different.

I don't like the backlash and toxicity that occurs when users demonstrate poor knowledge of OU. If someone makes a bad post, users should alert the moderators and the moderators will go delete it if they haven't already. If it's especially bad, maybe we crack a few jokes about it on IRC before moving on with our days. If people on IRC or in the forum don't know when to let a joke die, then we kick them or temp-ban them or infract them or delete their post. If they get mad that they're not being respected as competitive players, then we can kick them again until they realize being good at OU doesn't elevate you to god status in CAP. It's not nearly enough of a reason to disassociate from OU; that would be like burning down an apartment building because there are a few lousy tenants. And let's not exaggerate here: one person making a reference to a dated CAP meme like Thunderbolt Gengar is not a microcosm of a deep-seeded cultural problem. It's one person being a bit rude on an Internet forum. Regardless, if there are users who are offended by mentions of Thunderbolt Gengar, then it is our prerogative to stop making the joke. It's the socially just thing to do.

Furthermore, this really isn't the end of Gen 6 yet. Pokemon Sun and Moon aren't due to be released for another eight or nine months. We have time for two CAPs between now and then if the PR between them isn't mind-numbingly long. I don't consider "well the Gen's about to end anyway so this one doesn't really count" to be a good argument for abandoning our metagame at the last minute. Especially because a "field test" isn't going to be enough to determine if switching to the CAP metagame is worth it overall. It's going to take numerous CAPs, possibly an entire generation's worth, to evaluate if CAP culture and participation is better or worse than it is now.
 
Last edited:
Detroit Lolcat said:
Taking care of our own includes building for a metagame that our community is familiar with, and the overwhelming majority of CAP participants have more experience in OU than the CAP metagame. Deck Knight and I have the same objectives here, though we clearly differ in how we wish to accomplish them./It's going to take numerous CAPs, possibly an entire generation's worth, to evaluate if CAP culture and participation is better or worse than it is now.
I'm having problems understanding this, so maybe you can help clarify for CAP metagame enthusiasts like myself. We've talked about this before, but you never really gave a satisfactory answer - you kept talking past it never really acknowledging it. Putting aside whether or not CAP as a metagame is viable now, how can it ever become viable if it's never promoted? Do you think OU would be so popular if it wasn't supposed to be the crown jewel of Smogon? I don't think so. I don't think CAP will grow at a reasonable rate if it doesn't get promoted, glorified, praised and such as one would imagine a metagame built around a fakemon for a project meant for creating said fakemon would. If CAP the project intentionally pushes CAP the metagame to the side, what does that really say about it that not even its supporters don't support it? What kind of picture does that paint to those who might be interested in CAP? We all lauded how CAP's image seduced us into giving it a go during the IRC meeting but the image you're painting now suggests we should act counter-intuitively. The argument you put forth is that OU is familiar; that OU is better because it's developed, popular, accessible (totally debatable that it's more accessible) infinitely more so than CAP. And yes, it is. But it's also been more developed, more promoted, and more supported than the CAP metagame has been. So I ask you simply: if you're choosing OU because it's what CAP isn't, then how could CAP ever be what OU is (or once was)? Your ideology is running a catch 22.

And that's why we need to promote, develop, and support CAP now... not after "an entire generation's worth." Whether or not my words were taken out of context in an earlier post is debatable, but the point of contention that OU and CAP culture run counterproductive to each other is very real. And to be honest, I don't see any facts, figures, or logic to support the notion that we would need anymore or less CAP to determine culture differentials right now.

Detoirt Lolcat said:
It's not nearly enough of a reason to disassociate from OU; that would be like burning down an apartment building because there are a few lousy tenants. And let's not exaggerate here: one person making a reference to a dated CAP meme like Thunderbolt Gengar is not a microcosm of a deep-seeded cultural problem.
I also find that this analogy is rather libelous of the current situation because no one is suggesting we burn down everything that has been built over a few people. It's a ludicrous comment that only attempts to pull at the heart strings of those who agree with you while dismissing opposing views. Your analogy would be a whole lot more accurate if you suggested maybe, I don't know, moving out/kicking them out as opposed to burning the apartment building down. And why are we moving out/kicking them out? Because the lousy tenants don't care about our values and they're creating a toxic environment - suddenly this analogy becomes a whole lot more relatable to the current issue. As well, I feel like your comment about exaggeration is misleading because no one citing cultural problems is hinging it on a dated CAP meme or a single person(s) and to suggest that is misleading of the facts.

Overall, the points are there but I'm not really seeing much substance to back up the claims, Detroit Lolcat.

PS. A memo to serve as a reminder that the topic hasn't quite stepped away as it was set to be about CAP22 being a test run into CAP inclusive metagame as is (with OU rules), and that the more we talk about OU the more we're actually moving away from the actual topic at hand.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
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I need to walk a few things back. When I screw up I ought to be the first to acknowledge it.

I greatly overstated some of my criticisms of OU's policy direction. Suspect testing gets so much coverage and is so time consuming (and has affected outcomes numerous times) that if you're not actively monitoring the forum you can miss that it's seen as a necessary evil, not a ladder to notoriety. Needless to say since I'm not staff anymore I haven't been putting in that time investment so I gravely characterized the general outlook of that forum.

Toxicity in this forum is still a serious problem though, and a lot of it does stem from the fact that a number of long-time contributors have abused our forums cultural deference for prior contributions and battling knowledge. We give people who ought to know better a very wide berth, and it's done a lot of damage.

The core of this thread, at least recently, is how to change this. It might be as simple as "more hard-ass moderation" when our more experienced members cross the line. Our end goal is to be open and inviting. Allowing a culture to develop that is not so does damage to that goal. If I can offer my own assessment, the reason this thread had gone on so long is we have been wandering from topic to topic trying to identify the elements of the problem.

But for the rest of the post I'm going to take a few steps back from all these trees and look at the forest:

We basically had three phases to this thread:
- July 2015 (Changing to CAP Meta)
(Huge Gap) [CAP 21]
- December 2015-January 2015 (Which meta should we build for)
- January 2015-Present (Cultural Issues)


I would note that Doug's original Christmas Eve post that rebooted the thread wasn't solely about cultural issues but that is where the conversation went in early January and leads us into the present.

Here are the subtopics we've covered and any resolution:

1. Supporting the CAP Metagame. - I believe running a concurrent ladder with the suspect test resolved basically all serious issues with our own metagame feeling like a stranger in a strange land. RESOLVED.
2. Playing Catch-Up with Suspect Tests
- This was one of my own reasons for shifting from supporting OU in July to opposing it in December but this concern has obviated itself for now. However, it will be a HUGE issue in Gen 7. RESOLVED for now, ISSUE later.
3.
Defining "What is Competitive Pokemon?" - This is the philosophical question at the center of the "build for OU" vs. "build for CAP" decision.

I personally believe we will get more insight into answering this question by setting up a process where we build for the CAP metagame. I'm not immune to the points that doing so limits accessibility but as in all things, there are trade-offs. UNRESOLVED.

4. Expanding the CAP Metagame
- Separate from the first point above, this topic is about whether we should have a branch project for modernizing the CAP metagame in and of itself - separate from whatever we build new CAP Pokemon for. This should really be a separate thread. UNRESOLVED.

5. Fixing Concepts.
- We have a separate PR thread for this now. RESOLVED. (For the purposes of THIS thread anyway,)

6. Deciding which Metagame we build for in CAP 22. - The central issue of the major phases of this thread. UNRESOLVED.

7. Improving CAP Culture. - The issue the thread is discussing currently. UNRESOLVED.

Boiled down we have two remaining discussions relevant to this thread:

1. Defining "What is Competitive Pokemon" and Which Metagame We Build For in CAP22.

This is the philosophical and mechanical question at the core of this thread going all the way back to last July. Time to weigh the pros and cons and come up with a resolution.

2. Formulating whatever policies necessary to reform culture, whether those are user policies or moderation policies.

This is the heart if the cultural discussion. Part of this will be staff decisions but I think a significant portion should be what do CAP PRC leaders want to see us do as far as policing our own. This is a community where we need license to be creative and to allow for gentle but firm correction. So lets get something on paper to do that.
 
March 11th:

Birkal said:
I'd like for us to try making CAP22 for the CAP Metagame and move forward from there. This would involve minimal shift in policy, in terms of how we run processes and regulate our discussions. The only real shift would be which metagame we focus on. I've detailed the reasons why this is a good idea in the original post of this thread, so please go read there. Once we've finished CAP 22, let's run a reflection on how the process went and see what we'd like to do for the future. This gives us the opportunity to try something new without call for a massive overhaul that the PRC seems to be afraid of as a whole. If we have one of these projects under our belt, we can further assess how (and if) we want to delve into the world of creating our own metagame.
...

March 23rd:

Deck Knight said:
1. Defining "What is Competitive Pokemon" and Which Metagame We Build For in CAP22.

This is the philosophical and mechanical question at the core of this thread going all the way back to last July. Time to weigh the pros and cons and come up with a resolution.

2. Formulating whatever policies necessary to reform culture, whether those are user policies or moderation policies.

This is the heart if the cultural discussion. Part of this will be staff decisions but I think a significant portion should be what do CAP PRC leaders want to see us do as far as policing our own. This is a community where we need license to be creative and to allow for gentle but firm correction. So lets get something on paper to do that.
...

March 26th, today:

I'd like to expand on our direction and what we have left to accomplish before we adjourn this PRC. I'll start by noting the dates, which show what may be a waning desire or interest in the PRC. March 11th (over two weeks ago!!) there was a very fair directional announcement posted to shift our focus towards the direction of a trial run in CAP as it currently stands admist claims of cultural divergences among OU and CAP, with the caveat that those who are diehard OU traditionalists are fully eligible to submit a motion why we shouldn't switch from OU. Whether or not you're for OU or CAP, or don't really care, this really is a logically sound move which allows us to determine with knowledge of experience if the move is one best for us to make as opposed to that of guesswork. Since then however, the discussion has devolved into more OU or CAP banter. And while the arguments for and against have been well articulated, it's been relatively off topic. March 23rd Deck Knight takes effort to attempt to summarize all 9+ months of our discussion and does a pretty bang up job in the process (Thank you!). Yet three days later we have radio silence in response to this effort to refocus, telltale signs that waning interest in political discourse has breached our committee. To this end, I'd like to ask DougJustDoug to at the very least set a timetable for the deadline of this policy so it doesn't drag on endlessly. If people are done speaking on the matter it shouldn't weigh down the process; those who are willing to speak will have their voice heard and we'll surely be able to nail out something by the deadline.

More specifically, I want to personally note that since a ruling on which metagame we're going to focus on (for now) has been made public, let's put that on the back burner now and consider it 'RESOLVED'. Let's worry about the bigger issue: Toxicity. How do we fix it? If stricter moderation and telling people to 'suck it up' isn't a feasible solution (as noted by Birkal's original post), what is? I'd like to go back to my premise of Flash CAPs as a tool for educating newcomers about the process and showing them how fun it can be. It doesn't need to be a mandatory necessity to enter the main CAP but I feel it has benefits we're not taking advantage of to help educate the core group of users who are less knowing. Prevention after all is half the battle of deterring 'cancer' - whether its palliative care for actual cancer or education for metaphorical cancer. If this toxicity in CAP is cancerous, we should address it like such and be figuring out ways to not only heal it but prevent it.
 

snake

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CAP Co-Leader
Perhaps another way to prevent toxicity is to have people be required somehow to read what CAP is about, as I previously stated in another post. In the short discussion about it in the CAP room on PS!, most people compared it to the Terms and Conditions for products. I think their point was that no one really reads through them, but that's really because they can be as long and boring as Hugo's Bird's-Eye View of Paris. However, perhaps if we did make a draft for something "Required Reading" might be nice, instead of having someone randomly post.

I concede it will make it harder for people to jump into CAP, but perhaps it will mitigate the toxicity problem if people know what the project is, how it functions, what a good post looks like, without getting TOO long.

This article (that no one sees because they just hop straight to the forums) sums it up pretty well, but it could use a little updating. Perhaps a little bit of "here's what a good post looks like" and "here's what a bad post looks like". I think a good post doesn't have to be a wall of text and calcs; it just needs to have decent grammar and knowledge behind it.
http://www.smogon.com/cap/articles/newcomers_guide

Overall, at the cost of having people read something for a few minutes, we could have better discussion. Far too often I see someone posting something a little "stupid", and the post gets locked/deleted because they didn't read basic rules. If we lower the number of "stupid" posts and the magnitude of "stupidity", I believe toxicity will also be lowered.


Another subject I'd personally like to hear what everyone thinks about is how polls don't really reflect the arguments in the discussion. It seems to me that some people just look at the options for the poll and try to make their best judgement from there, instead of looking at the thread where people have spent their valuable time and effort to provide basis for the polls. The greatest example for me is the Attacking Movepoll Dicussion/Poll for Cawmodore, where lots of people said that it either had to be Acrobatics or Drain Punch, yet it got both. I know its been awhile since then, but I'd like to hear if anyone else sees this issue. It might just be me.
 
Another subject I'd personally like to hear what everyone thinks about is how polls don't really reflect the arguments in the discussion. It seems to me that some people just look at the options for the poll and try to make their best judgement from there, instead of looking at the thread where people have spent their valuable time and effort to provide basis for the polls. The greatest example for me is the Attacking Movepoll Dicussion/Poll for Cawmodore, where lots of people said that it either had to be Acrobatics or Drain Punch, yet it got both. I know its been awhile since then, but I'd like to hear if anyone else sees this issue. It might just be me.
I'd argue that the issue here is the slate, not the polling. For instance, that slate probably should have been

Allow Acrobatics but not Drain Punch
Allow Drain Punch but not Acrobatics
Disallow Drain Punch and Acrobatics
Allow Brick Break
Disallow Brick Break


It also seems to be sketchy in other places too. A good solid portion of the non-attack move discussion for Plasmanta was about how it needed hazard removal if it was going to be any good at what it was trying to accomplish, and then by Movepool, it didn't have any.

Also, I think at this point nobody really seems to have much to input (or if they do, they haven't felt it pertinent enough to comment on in the last month or two), so we should probably resolve how we feel on slate specificity and try to move on to our next CAP before Sun and Moon comes out.
 

snake

is a Community Leaderis a Top CAP Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
CAP Co-Leader
I'd argue that the issue here is the slate, not the polling. For instance, that slate probably should have been

Allow Acrobatics but not Drain Punch
Allow Drain Punch but not Acrobatics
Disallow Drain Punch and Acrobatics
Allow Brick Break
Disallow Brick Break


It also seems to be sketchy in other places too. A good solid portion of the non-attack move discussion for Plasmanta was about how it needed hazard removal if it was going to be any good at what it was trying to accomplish, and then by Movepool, it didn't have any.

Also, I think at this point nobody really seems to have much to input (or if they do, they haven't felt it pertinent enough to comment on in the last month or two), so we should probably resolve how we feel on slate specificity and try to move on to our next CAP before Sun and Moon comes out.
Wow someone replied...

I've been thinking about that since I wrote that post, and I came to a similar conclusion as NumberCruncher. I still think that there should be some way make people read the discussion or something rather than blindly vote: something that encourages more intelligent voting.

I do feel like more restrictive slating could be a good solution. Instead of being able to allow a bunch of moves that eventually makes the mon too good, we should be able to say something like "Pick two of [4 options]" or make a slate similar to NumberCruncher's. Basically, if we can't force people to vote intelligently (which I know many people do, but then you get the masses who don't read the discussion), we need to make it so the options for voting reflect the discussion at the very least.
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
The job of the TL and TLT is already to make sure that there is a sane slate which agrees with community consensus. If they fuck up dramatically, the moderator team exists as a fallback. But beyond that, extra restrictions upon voting in any way are not on the table, as any restrictions would go against the spirit of CAP.

What you're asking for is already the job of the TLT in other words, and unfortunately nobody's perfect.
 

snake

is a Community Leaderis a Top CAP Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
CAP Co-Leader
The job of the TL and TLT is already to make sure that there is a sane slate which agrees with community consensus. If they fuck up dramatically, the moderator team exists as a fallback. But beyond that, extra restrictions upon voting in any way are not on the table, as any restrictions would go against the spirit of CAP.

What you're asking for is already the job of the TLT in other words, and unfortunately nobody's perfect.
I see your point; maybe I'm misunderstanding the point of having a discussion. Is it solely to create a slate for the voting process?

In my opinion, it should also be a way for people to understand why options are there in the first place. If I see a bunch of options for a Pokemon, I'm going to at least skim the discussion to know what I'm actually voting for. Otherwise, what's the point of having a discussion that can take days and weeks long just to have a voting period that goes completely against the discussion? Maybe I'm alone on my opinion, but I want to know whether we generate discussion solely to create a slate OR to create a slate and let people see why the slate exists. I honestly don't mean to bash any past TLTs or TLs at all, but I feel like voting is a weak point in CAP at the present time.
 

DougJustDoug

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Moderator
Conclusion

This thread opened almost 1 year ago, and it has generated tons of attention and controversy along the way. We have been up, down, and all around the issues -- not just here in this thread, but in numerous IRC channel conversations and PS CAP room chats as well.

There has been consistent agreement that CAP has some serious problems that should be addressed, but that's really all we could agree on. More so than probably any CAP policy discussion I can remember, no matter how much we tried, we simply could not generate any real consensus on how to address the problems. And the disagreements were not just limited to the PRC. There was disagreement within the CAP mod staff as well, which has made it even tougher to drive to some form of conclusion on this. I won't recap all the arguments for or against the theorized reasons for problems and the potential solutions. But we have been all over the map on this stuff, at all levels.

We have circled around for months and months, at a literal impasse. There is wide agreement that the status quo has serious problems that require something to change, but wide disagreement as to what needs to change and/or how it should be changed. We can't sit on this any longer. So here is what we are going to do:

  • CAP 22 will be a pokemon built for the CAP Metagame, not OU
  • CAP 22 will start ASAP
  • We will try to capitalize, as much as possible, on the existing expertise and knowledge we have on the CAP metagame, in terms of leadership, guidance, and general discussion quality for CAP 22
  • After CAP 22, we will open a retrospective thread and discuss the good and the bad aspects of the project, and decide what to do next time

If you disagree this is the best direction for CAP 22, I understand. If you have read my numerous, voluminous posts in this thread, you know this direction is NOT the direction I personally have been pushing for. But this is the direction that we are going with, and I hope everyone agrees that it is better for us to go in A direction, rather than continuing to discuss the issues and do nothing. It's time to get moving.

So, as soon as I push the "Post Reply" button here, this IS the direction that I am going to give my full and earnest support, and I ask all of you to do the same. Or you can sit this one out, that's fine too. What is not fine, is using CAP 22 as a soapbox to continue arguing about "what we should have done". At this point, we need people that want to make this project as fun and engaging as it can be. There are MANY exciting aspects to this new direction, and we are sure to learn a lot along the way.

Come join the fun!™
 
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